Egghead and Twinkie is lightning in a bottle. For those who are fans of high school buddy road trips, this movie is a must-watch. After coming out to her parents, Vivian “Twinkie” runs away from home in the final weeks of summer break with her best friend who’s about to go off to college. Shenanigans ensue. At its core this is a film for the misfits among us.
It takes some time and patience to move past the title and the way in which the main character unreflectively embraces a slur, but the payoff is worth the wait, and the discussion the film has about identity and its construction is mesmerizing. The dialogue effortlessly shifts from airy and light to tensely erotic to earnest and soulful. The playfulness of the Scott Pilgrim/Mitchells and the Machines aesthetic of animated enhancements keeps going strong for the first two acts and lets the film land on its own momentum in the third. There are some moments of drop dead funny editing in the framed narrative structure of the first half of the film, moments that even got Wife to sit down and watch the second half of the movie after listening in from the other room for forty minutes.
Asahi Hirano (Jess) and Sabrina Jieafa (Twinkie) are electric on screen. Even though Hirano has few feature length credit to her name, she seems destined for greatness. She has the comic timing, smooth delivery, and talent for awkwardness, testaments to her versatility. Jieafa has the tougher role of the fish out of water in more ways than one, unsure of where she fits in, not quite American, not quite Chinese, newly out, and within weeks of losing her closest friend to college: she shares a lot of Rue energy (Zendaya’s character from Euphoria), the practiced nonchalant lying, cramped posture, and manic nervous energy. Jieafa’s Twinkie doesn’t have the shame and self-destructive tendencies of Rue, which suits her well for this buzzy, punchy comedy, but there are sure to be comparisons made if this movie makes it to a wider audience.
A note on the plot generally: there were large elements of it that seem to bear a resemblance to Hulu’s Plan B (2021) in ways that are not entirely unpleasant but might make it feel a little well-tread. Both movies feature 1) diverse, 2) high school students from 3) conservative backgrounds–easy enough cross over–with 4) on a roadtrip, 5) where one of the friends is secretly texting a gay romantic figure, 6) who is (maybe uncomfortably?) older than the teenage protagonist, 7) and they end up at a party where there’s a 8) blow out fight. Writer and director Sarah Kambe Holland is obviously doing some great work with the movie’s interest in the concept of the “situationship” and the fragility of mismatched desires. She is clearly influenced by some great fanfiction tropes and the relationship between Jess and Twinkie is so satisfying.
Sure to be a classic, check out Egghead and Twinkie.
